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Topic: Making Conflicts Riskier (Read 59 times)

I have a question to ask you good people of the forum, regarding a change in the way conflicts between characters are resolved: does anyone considered altering conflicts between characters so they are a "two-way street"? In the current rules, every time an attacker fails his attack roll, the result is "nothing happens". But what if, every time you attack (either physically, socially or psychologically) someone, you risk taking damage if you fail your roll?

The first change it would cause, that I can see, is taking a defensive action would be more advantageous than it currently is and initiating a conflict will be a much more risky affair. I don't necessarily see those consequences as bad things, at a glance. What do you guys think? There is any obvious problems that I'm missing?

One thing to note (that we often forget) is that Complications are a thing in combat: If I attack a defender and get an Outcome in the negatives, then I can expect Complications from that. It's covered in page 191 of the core book.

One of the more extreme Complications allowed (though Crafty warns against its overuse) is indeed hurting the attacker's Resilience(s).

Ditto what Kurkistan said: complications are suppose to apply in combat, but most people forget to do it. Truth be told I usually forget to apply complications during regular challenges.

Plus I usually find that I want conflicts to extend longer- not end sooner- so I'd be more inclined to tweak things in favor of making combat less dangerous. For example, I've toyed around for a while with the idea of putting a cap on how many nudges can be applied towards damage. Probably 0-1 nudges. The rest would have to be applied towards other nudgey type things, like causing your opponent to stumble (-1D to his next dice pool) or gaining an advantageous position (+1D to your next dice pool) or taking 1 step for free or etc. I think it would make combat far more interesting than "I hit with my axe and 3 nudges- that's 7 damage. Opponent now has a grave burden and only 4 health remaining."